


Bring it on Home

by Sholio



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Kid Fic, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 20:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11387490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: For a Tumblr prompt about kid!Peter getting lost on an alien planet and accidentally meeting Stakar's Ravagers.





	Bring it on Home

**Author's Note:**

> So I got this prompt on Tumblr: _could you write something with stakar meeting peter as a kid? maybe peter loses yondu while they're on a planet and attaches himself to stakar because he recognizes the coat?_
> 
> Well of course I could. :D

Peter only stops for a minute, hanging through the bars of a corral to watch a display of synchronized riding by orange-skinned, green-haired ladies in flowing silks, on six-legged animals with long streaming fur that makes them look like a cross between horses and llamas and those little dogs that look like mops. The ladies are standing up barefoot on the backs of the horse/dog/llamas, twirling batons with fire on the tips, and Peter thinks it's just about the coolest thing he's ever seen.

He swears he was only watching for a minute, but when when he looks up, any signs of nearby Ravager red have vanished in the festival crowd of aliens thronging the streets.

There's some kind of carnival going on. It's awesome -- the closest thing Peter's seen was the Missouri state fair, and he thought that was pretty rad, but this is _way_ cooler. He wouldn't have thought space pirates would like going to things like fairs and carnivals for fun, but the Ravagers hit the planet and fanned out into the carnival crowd like a bunch of overgrown kids, so apparently they do.

Yondu, as usual, hasn't been looking like he's having much fun at all, just marching around glowering at anybody who gets in his way. However, he did point Peter at a display of candy earlier and told him that anything he could steal without getting caught, he could keep, so now Peter's pockets are stuffed full of alien candy bars and other treats (he's getting pretty good at this whole stealing thing) and his fingers are sticky. He's pretty confident that he won't starve if he can't find Yondu again.

But he's also nine years old and he's lost on an alien planet. 

He tells himself that he doesn't even _want_ to find Yondu again. Maybe he can cry at some nice alien lady who will take him home (this is another thing Yondu's been teaching him how to do, playing the "cute kid" card at people to get them to give him stuff). What's Yondu gonna do, kill a whole family of nice suburban alien people to get him back?

... well. Well, actually Yondu probably _would_ do that, not because he cares about Peter as a person, but because he's made it really clear that he's been putting a lot of work into training Peter, and anybody who beats up Peter or tries to eat him is Messin' With The Cap'n's Investment In This Here Thief Kid. Presumably this also applies to adopting Peter into a nice alien family with other kids and whatever the alien equivalent of a dog is.

Peter is also just old enough to suspect that running away from the Ravagers probably isn't going to get him adopted into a nice alien family; it's more likely to get him into the alien equivalent of an orphanage. He's seen _Oliver!_ on TV, and he gets the general idea that being stuck with the alien equivalent of Artful Dodger and Fagin rolled into one is better than finding out what alien planets do with orphans.

So he makes his way through the crowds, which suddenly seem a lot less funny and entertaining than they did a half hour ago, and it starts to sink in that he has no idea how to get back to where they parked their ship, or any of the places they've already been. He doesn't even think he can find the place with the fire-twirling ladies again.

People bump into him. He's almost squashed by someone riding a big animal that makes him think of a brontosaurus with iron-shod hooves, which under other circumstances would be _awesome_ , but not right now. He never realized how much protection he used to get from walking along in the shadow of Yondu's flowing red coat. Now he's getting bumped and jostled and it's all he can do to keep himself from being trampled.

"Hey there, little kid," says a scruffy-looking panhandler with a ring of tentacles around his head and long, sharp teeth that are revealed when he pulls his lips back in a fierce grin. "You lost?"

"No!" Peter squeaks, and dashes into the crowd. Someone very tall (eight feet at least) kicks him by accident, at least he thinks it's by accident. He stumbles to the edge of the flow of pedestrians and presses against the side of a building. He's starting to feel very scared and very small. He doesn't want to admit, even to himself, how desperately he wants to catch a glimpse of Ravager red, Ravager flames.

And then he _does_ see the flames, but they're not on a red Ravager jacket. They're pinned to the dark blue coats of a group of people, mostly men plus one woman, who are strolling along with a cocky attitude that Peter recognizes because Yondu walks that way too.

They're not wearing red, so they're not from Yondu's ship, but they _are_ Ravagers. Peter didn't know there were other Ravagers besides Yondu's crew, but the universe is full of things Yondu hasn't taught him about.

He darts forward and settles into their wake. He's not quite sure whether he can work up the nerve to actually talk to them, but walking with them like this ... it feels the same way that walking with Yondu feels. People get out of their way, so Peter ghosts along quietly in their wake, a silent little shadow in scaled-down red leathers, enjoying the relative feeling of safety while he tries to think how he can find Yondu again and whether these people might be able to help him.

Until the little group of blue-clad Ravagers stop and Peter bumps into someone's back. With a gasp, he scrambles backward, but a big hand closes over his. An _enormous_ hand. This guy looks basically human, but he's _huge._

"Hey, Stakar," the guy says in a deep, rumbling voice. "Looks like I caught me a pickpocket."

"No!" Peter gasps, writhing. He might as well have his hand in an iron vise. Yondu's been teaching him self-defense and he tries to lash out with his feet, but the guy holds him at arm's length and all Peter can do is flail at him. Which is pretty much how his self-defense training with Yondu typically goes, come to think of it.

The adults close around him, and suddenly he feels like he's trapped in a ring of blue leather coats. Terrified, Peter tries to bite the big guy, who closes another huge hand over his head and tips his head back so he can't.

"Is that a Ravager coat?" a woman's voice asks. She crouches down to bring herself to Peter's level ... well, Peter's normal level, though right now he's dangling in the big guy's grip. "Charlie, you're scaring him."

"He's tryin' to bite me," Charlie grumbles.

This makes the woman grin. "Oh no, poor baby. You can't even handle a tiny l'il street kid? Want me an' Stakar to warm up some nice hot milk for ya?"

Her hair is a wild dark mop done up with haphazardly-applied combs, her eyes bright, and her grin full of teeth. Although she, too, looks basically human, she makes Peter think of Yondu, which is less than comforting under the circumstances. He's pretty sure he knows what Yondu would do to a kid who he thinks tried to steal from him.

"I'm not a thief!" he gasps when Charlie's hand lets go of his head so his mouth isn't mostly covered up. "I'm not, I swear! I -- I -- I'm a Ravager! You're Ravagers, right?"

The woman raises her eyebrows, and another man leans down, craggy-faced and frowning. "Ravager huh? Little scrap like you? What ship are you on, boy?"

"Yondu's," Peter says, panting.

The adults all look at each other, and a sharp electric current of something or other passes between them. "Well, now you ain't," the man says. "Charlie, bring 'im."

"Sure thing, Stakar," the big guy says easily, throwing Peter over his shoulder and ignoring Peter's shriek of outrage and subsequent attempts to pummel Charlie's back and neck with his fists. "What're we gonna do with him?"

"Not sure," Stakar says heavily. "But looks like Udonta ain't learned a thing."

Peter barely hears them; he figures he should've expected this, since it was Ravagers who abducted him in the first place, but now he's being abducted _from_ Ravagers _by_ Ravagers, and this is just ridiculous. Or at least he thought they were Ravagers at first. Maybe they're not; maybe the flame means something very different on a blue coat. "Let me go!" he shrieks in fury. "Take me home, take me back! Yondu's gonna _murder_ you!"

(He won't realize until a long time later that "home", in this context, doesn't mean Earth.)

"Settle down, kid," Charlie grunts.

With an effort, Peter manages to get himself under control and goes limp, draping over Charlie's shoulder in seeming capitulation. What he's thinking, though, is how Yondu's self-defense lessons have always included more than kicking his feet out from under him or smacking him down to the floor. (Although they do include plenty of those things.)

 _"Fight smart, boy. Think about what advantages you got they don't. Think about what weaknesses they got that_ you _don't. You ain't gonna win a fight hand to hand, not as small and scrawny as you are --"_ This part was usually reinforced by smacking him bruisingly to the _Eclector's_ deck plates again. _"So you gotta win smart. Kick 'em in the nuts, stab 'em in the back, use every dirty trick you can. Ain't no such thing as a fair fight when you're fighting for your life."_

An inner voice that sounds a lot like Yondu asks him what he has in the way of advantages, so he lists them to himself, his lips moving soundlessly. He has a small blaster on his belt, but he doesn't think he can get to it without Charlie noticing. And he has a knife up his sleeve.

The woman and Stakar are talking, something about Yondu, but Peter doesn't really hear. He's carefully slipping the knife into his palm, and then he grips the handle and sinks it up to the hilt in the massive slabs of muscle that make up Charlie's back.

Charlie gives a startled yelp and Peter tumbles to the ground. But he's taken worse falls a hundred times in Yondu's self-defense lessons, and by now, after months of nursing bruises, it's second nature to roll and spring to his feet. He sprints into the crowd.

Behind him, he hears the woman's disgruntled voice: "Charlie!"

"Damn l'il fucker stabbed me!"

Peter stumbles to a halt once the crowd has swallowed him up and hidden from those blue-coat not-Ravagers. His fingers are sticky with blood that is just a little more purple than human blood. In a distant part of his still-rattled brain, he's a little upset to notice that he dropped the knife by accident -- it was a pretty cool knife, that Yondu let him pick out from the Captain's own knife collection. 

He flexes his sticky hand and realizes that he's shivering. Okay, he ditched _those_ jerks, but he still doesn't know how to find --

"Where the hell you been, boy?" an all too familiar voice snaps, as a heavy hand settles on his collar and yanks him back.

 _"Yondu,"_ Peter says, and it's adrenaline and fear and that awful jittery keyed-up feeling from being in a real, actual fight and he doesn't even know what else that makes him spin around and throw his arms around Yondu's waist. 

Yondu makes a choked sound, and Peter realizes in the same instant what he's _doing_ (the fact that he's now face to face with the gently glowing arrow in its holster is a pretty good reminder) and he drops Yondu like an Aaskavarian razor-snake.

"How'd you find me?" he demands, tucking his hands under his arms to stop them from doing any more accidental hugging of space pirates.

"Got a tracker on you, boy."

Because of course he does.

"Would'a found you sooner, but you kept movin' around." The hand settles on his collar again, big warm blue fingers pressing and staying in place, and if Peter didn't know any better (which he _does,_ he _does_ know better, he knows they only keep him around 'cause he's useful), he might think it was comforting, having it there. Might think Yondu was holding onto him for some reason other than keeping him from running off again.

 

***

 

**Epilogue:**

 

"I cannot believe," Stakar snaps, pacing his quarters, the high-dollar Xandarian brandy nearly slopping out of the cup held in his white-knuckled grip, "cannot _believe_ that asshole is still trafficking in kids! Ain't nothing gets through that thick Centaurian skull, nothing at all?"

Aleta is taking down her hair from the combs in which she'd pinned it up for the festival, one leg tucked under her on Stakar's bed. Her long Ravager coat is thrown over the back of a chair, leaving her in a loose dark tunic and leather pants. She'll need to be back to her own ship soon ... but not yet, not quite yet. "You know," she remarks, "I've probably heard Yondu's name on your lips more than my own since you kicked him out."

"Don't start with me, woman."

Aleta snorts around the comb she's holding in her mouth. "That child was wearing the flames. You saw that, didn't you?"

"Yondu ain't supposed to be wearing the flames, let alone pinning them on someone else!"

"I'm just saying, perhaps it's not what you think. That boy could be someone's kid brother or a pirate's by-blow he took on board the ship." 

Stakar blows out his breath and leans against the window. His quarters are at the very top of the ship, with a 360-degree view of space around them. No one can see in from the outside; it's simultaneously very private and about the closest possible thing to being in the middle of the stars he loves so much.

"I just kept thinking he could change, Aleta," he mutters, breath fogging the glass, and for a moment she glimpses the depth of the pain he still carries about Yondu's betrayal.

Still, it's her job as his wife and co-captain not to let him wallow in it. "Would you let him back in if he did?"

"Damn it, woman ..."

"Why don't you stop thinking about Yondu," she says, tossing the handful of combs carelessly in the direction of the chair (about half of them land on it, the other half scattering on the floor), "and come pay some attention to me for a change."

But much later that night, she sits on the end of the bed, naked except for her usual knives (one in an ankle sheath, the other strapped to her upper arm), and looks out at the stars above and behind and all around. Stakar snores softly with a white snow-dragon pelt thrown over him, while Aleta thinks about that wild, angry child in the red Ravager coat.

 _"Yondu's gonna_ murder _you!"_ he'd screamed.

Aleta slips one of her knives out of its sheath and absently picks her teeth with it, one arm thrown over her bare knees. She's pretty sure the backstabbing maneuver the boy used on Charlie (who was still complaining about the dressing on his back, last she saw him, despite the fact it hadn't even gone through the muscle) is exactly the sort of move that a former child slave might teach someone equally small, equally scrawny, with all the same disadvantages that he'd had, a long time ago.

 _Yondu, you asshole,_ she thinks, _it'd be just like you to start savin' kids instead of sellin' em and never breathe a word to us._

Not that it's any of her business. Yondu made his choices long ago. Is still makin' em, come to that. Still, she can't help hoping their paths might cross again, out here in the stars one of these days. She'd like to find out if that scrappy little kid with a brave heart much bigger than his skinny body (who reminds her so much of another scrappy kid she knew, once upon a time) is still on Yondu's crew, next time they meet.

**Author's Note:**

> Peter's split-second hug in this fic was inspired by [daryshkart's fanart of Peter doing this exact thing](http://daryshkart.tumblr.com/post/162328835244/some-mutually-flabbergasted-hugs-between-peter-and).


End file.
